Chapter IV

It was a morning of considerable excitement when Helen went for her first ride with Mabel Marridon.

She had had her lessons in town — as Percy had had his in the shooting-school. For the first three or four lessons Percy had accompanied her, but after a couple of falls on his part, it had somehow got itself arranged that they should go separately. She had learned all the tricks, there in the large blue-atmosphered riding-school which had so peculiar a smell of tan and saddles, and had taken to it with some address. Then she had ridden out three or four times with the second coachman close behind, and had distinctly galloped — really galloped — up a nice soft grass ravine where it was practically impossible to lose control of her mare. She had returned with an ineffable air of contentment and competence.

The morning on which, it had been arranged, she was to be called for by Mabel, was one of those soft winter days of sunshine and general dampness under foot. Eleven was the appointed hour; and, by a quarter to, a little group had assembled in the hall, all the members of which, except Helen, pretended to be there by accident. For, far beyond that romance which Helen frankly admitted — the romance, that is to say, of going out for a real ride in the country (beginning in your own park), on your own mare, in your own riding-habit, with your own groom who had received explicit instructions to keep properly far behind — there was besides evidence of really having taken a proper place in county society when a girl

Digitized by Google of one family lately arrived, goes out for a tete-drtete expedition with another girl of her own age who is the daughter of a neighbouring peer. The very slightness and informality of the matter shows its security.

So Percy was there, in pumps and knickerbockers, with his hands in his pockets, looking at the illustrated papers on the top of the Jacobean chest; and Helen's maid was there, giving little earnest pulls to her mistress' habit to ensure its proper hang; and her father was reading the Times by the hall fire and glancing over the top of it; and her mother was there, pretending to be anxious in one direction, when she was really anxious in another.

" I don't want you to go too much on the highroad," she said. " I don't think Jennie likes motors much."

" Mabel said she'd show me a bridle-path all the way — (oh! don't jerk so, Charlotte) — all the way to Cleever."

" Helen! let Charlotte put that straight at once. That skirt doesn't hang at all well. I must see about sending to have it altered."

"It fits perfectly, mother. What's the time, Percy?"

"Just gone the quarter," he murmured from over his papers.

" Oh! Mabel said she'd be here by eleven sharp."

" And don't be out too long," continued Mrs. Brandreth-Smith, approaching once more the subject with which she was principally concerned.

u No, mother."

" Mind you don't forget about bringing her in to lunch," she went on, with an admirable air of absentmindedness, reaching the goal on which she had set her heart. (It seemed to her exceedingly proper and pleasant that Lord Marridon's daughter* should drop in to lunch quite naturally; and she had determined not to be disappointed. But girls were so silly and forgetful.)

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" No, mother.... There! I hear her horse."

And Helen tore herself free from her maid's attentions.

But it was, honestly, romance that most occupied her thoughts, as she rode out with Mabel five minutes later, and through the swinging iron gate on to the grass; and, again, so soon as Jennie had done the little dance proper to every mare of spirit when her hoofs first touch grass.

" I... I don't ride very well, you know. D'you mind not cantering just yet?" she said with an attractive can-dour.

Mabel's little pointed face dimpled up with sympathetic humour.

" You shall set the pace," she said. " But you've got a lovely seat."

The nature of the romance was, as has been explained, the sense of lordliness and possessions and ease, and of doing real country things in the right way. In her feminine way she felt, to the full, those emotions, which, in a masculine way, moved Percy as he contemplated his well-ordered room, and James' respectful face, and Underbill's bent back, and his own shining gun and his homespun suit. It was delicious, she thought, to go out riding like this, with another girl, on a well-bred mare through pretty scenery. The sky was softly blue; the dead leaves smelled charmingly; the park-cattle clanked their bells very pleasantly in the distance.

Mabel looked different somehow on her chestnut horse, in her blue habit: she appeared more masterful and adequate, and appeared to manage « her mount without paying any attention to it. Helen felt her, more than ever, to be her own superior; and this rather increased her

Digitized by Google own attractiveness, since, if she had had a fault it had been that of laying down the law a little too positively to adoring friends.

" I wish I could ride as well as you," she sighed presently.

"Oh, you will directly," said the other, smiling; "you only want practice.... (Don't dance, Jack!) "

Helen presently became immensely interested in the relations between her own mare and Mabel's horse. They were out in the woods by now, and were for the first time riding very close together between the coverts.

Up to the present the two animals had been showing off to one another — (rather like their mistresses, in fact) — each pretending not to be aware that there was another of their kind present — shoving and pulling desperately to take the lead. Now they began to pay attention. Jack begun by putting his nose tentatively out into the direction of Jennie. Jennie responded by a disdainful toss of her head away from him. Then Jack edged closer, pressing against Helen's habit; and Jennie, more contemptuous than ever, sidled swiftly away, turning her hind quarters inwards, and an instant later Helen said " Oh! "

For it had appeared to her for one confused instant that there was no stability anywhere; her hat was jerked forward, her hands went forward into the air, and she found herself looking at the ground beyond Jennie's flattened ears. The beast had whisked round and kicked sharply.

"Oh! you beast!" said Helen. "I say " (She tried to shake her hat straight again.) Mabel laughed delightfully.

" I saw she was going to do it. It was all my little brute's fault for poking in where he wasn't wanted."

"Did... did she kick you?" asked Helen, settling herself down again.

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" No: we moved away in time. You sat it very well." " It's the first time she's ever kicked/' said Helen.

This was all very friendly and simple and pleasant. Jack and Jennie provided an ample field for a better mutual understanding between the two girls. Helen became more and more interested, not only in the minds of the two horses — in their curious little manifestations of surprise or attention or resentment — in the way the pointed ears moved, now back, now forward, and again (when there were two things to be attended to, such as a rustling in the undergrowth and a mistress's remarks) one forward and the other back — but also in Mabel's comments.

" Look," she said. " That means that Jennie wants to know what's making all that noise in the brushwood: she's getting ready to shy if a dragon comes out, but she knows perfectly well there isn't one. Speak to her."

** Jennie," remarked Helen, " attend to me." The right ear clicked back for an instant, and then cocked forward again.

" You see," said Mabel.

They reached presently a rising knoll in the woods, bare of trees, with the ground falling steeply beneath on three sides. Below, the delicate filigree of birches sloped away down to the carriage drive a hundred feet lower.

" Let's let them look at the view," said Mabel.

The two horses stood like statues, when once it was made clear that that was what was wished, turning attentive eyes this way and that. Indeed, it was a good view. A sharp valley was beneath them; rhododendrons fringed the glimpse of white road that was in sight, and the gleam of water which was all that could be seen of the long swan-pond. Heather clothed the opposite slope, interspersed

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" Those are the trees of Cleever," said Mabel, pointing with her whip beyond the end of the twisting valley. "We just cross the road at the end of this ride, and then get into the woods again."

" That's where Percy's going to shoot, isn't it? "

" Yes: if he'll come. But my brother's away: and there won't be any shooting till next month."

" He's only just learning, you know," said Helen.

" So he said. He said he wouldn't come till he was a bit better."

Jennie drew a long meditative sigh, and beat one dainty foot on to the springy earth.

" Poor dear! " said Mabel. " She's bored. She's looked at the view quite long enough, thank you."

Ill

"You see," began Helen, half an hour later as they turned homewards again in the Cleever woods, "you see Percy's an... an idealist."

They had talked Percy with breaks and parentheses ever since his name had been mentioned — Helen discussing him with something of a lofty air, and Mabel listening, with an occasional question or two. He was a very obvious subject for conversation under the circumstances. But Helen had not yet mentioned that he was undergoing instruction with a view to becoming a Catholic: her parents' attitude towards that proposed step had made her doubtful as to whether she had better speak of it. So she called him an idealist, instead. She thought that rather subtle.

" How do you mean? " asked Mabel with puckered fore- ' head.

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There is no end to the solemnity with which girls will discuss high matters when they are alone together. When they grow older, they learn that humour is more graceful.

"Well — he used always to be falling in love/' said Helen. " Oh! not really, you know; but as boys will. And now it's... it's "

Mabel glanced up questioningly.

" It's religion," said Helen firmly. And then discretion overcame her again. " He's very much interested in religion," she ended lamely.

" Really? In what way? "

" Oh! he thinks a lot about it. He doesn't talk of it much. But he's got a crucifix in his room, you know."

The questioning lines between Mabel's eyes came down into a distinct little frown.

" Oh! " she said, with a clear tinge of disapproval in her voice.

" Yes, I know," said Helen hastily, thankful that she had not said more. " I don't like that sort of thing either. Religion seems to me a much more spiritual thing than... than that kind of thing."

Mabel nodded emphatically two or three times.

" I'm very glad you think that," she said, with exceeding gravity. "We're... we're all rather low church you know — at least "

Helen made haste to agree, with reservations.

" Yes; so'm I; so long as it's not the Revival kind of thing and being saved. I hope yours isn't that sort? "

She glanced at her friend with a look of slight anxiety.

Mabel smiled again, without a trace of disapproval. "That's exactly what I think too," she said. "My father's very old-fashioned, you know. Just Church of

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England. And I'm the same, except that I don't like dogma much."

Helen was far too serious and awed to see anything at all incongruous in the thought of Lord Marridon being a pillar of dogma. She was pathetically anxious to please. She had been, almost unknown to herself, throughout the whole ride, interiorly adapting herself to meet this girl's views. It was very reassuring to her to hear Mabel's religious opinions.

" I'm so glad we agree," she said earnestly. " I say "

"Yes?"

"May I call you Mabel?"

The girl's face lit up with an exceedingly compelling friendliness.

"Why, of course!" she said. "What else— Helen?"

The same kind of emotion that descended from time to time upon Percy, as he contemplated some picturesque evidence of his own new importance, fell upon Helen, as in a kind of ecstasy, as they came out again from the lower woods and saw the great house smoking before them high against the sky.

It stood there, in so perfect a situation, as to seem inevitable; as if the eternal hills themselves had been set there to await the coming of Marston; the walls of the enclosed gardens cut the sky to the left; the high trees that sheltered the south finished the picture on the right; and, in the midst sat the august house itself, seen slightly from one side, built on a foundation (it seemed) of immovable terraces, and crowned with elaborate chimneys above the leads.

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And in all this, she had now an intimate part; and she was riding as an equal with a girl of her own age, of an unspeakably weighty social position, and she was to call her Mabel, and Mabel was to call her Helen; and they were to meet again and ride together again at least twice a week; and Mabel had said how pleased she was that Helen had come to Marston.

Percy strolled out behind Underhill on to the steps as they came up,

" Well? Had a good ride? " he asked.

(He really looked very nice, thought Helen, in his knickerbockers, and bareheaded.)

" Splendid. Jennie went like an angel on springs."

Then his mother appeared too, beaming with motherliness and hospitality.

u Well? Have you had a good ride? 99

" Lovely, mother."

Lunch was an unqualified success. Mabel bore herself beautifully, with just that mixture of dignity arid girlishness that was proper. Her manner was perfect. And Helen and Percy sparred pleasantly, the one about shooting and the other about riding; and Mabel turned laughing eyes from one to the other. And Mrs. Brandreth-Smith bore herself without a sign of severity, and completely succeeded in hiding her extreme anxiety that Mabel should really be at her ease; and her husband twinkled sedately in the background, and made a suitable remark about Lord Marridon, and never once made a false step.

" You really had a nice time, my dear? 99 asked Mrs. Brandreth-Smith benevolently, as she and Helen turned

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" Lovely, mother.". " She's a very nice girl indeed. I hope you'll make great friends. I heard you call her Mabel." " She told me to," said Helen.

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